DUTube

There is a new student video contest, courtesy of Student Life.

Do you have an experience, a story, an opinion or an idea that you think first year students at DU need to hear? Make a DUtube video about...

Diversity at DU
Gender Violence
sexual assault, dating violence,
domestic violence, stalking
Alcohol on campus
Marijuana on campus
Dealing with stress
Life at DU

What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution

This is a good report from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) -- "OPEN DOORS AND OPEN MINDS: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution," A SPARC / SCIENCE COMMONS WHITE PAPER (April 2008) Overview: The Internet has brought unparalleled opportunities for expanding availability of research by bringing down economic and physical barriers to sharing. The digitally networked environment promises to democratize access, carry knowledge beyond traditional research niches, accelerate discovery, encourage new and interdisciplinary approaches to ever more complex research challenges, and enable new computational research strategies. However, despite these opportunities for increasing access to knowledge, the prices of scholarly journals have risen sharply over the past two decades, often forcing libraries to cancel subscriptions. Today even the wealthiest institutions cannot afford to sustain all of the journals needed by their faculties and students.Be on the lookout for the University of Denver Institutional Repository, coming in the near future. The PDF is available here.

Writing, Technology and Teens

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has produced another great report - "Writing, Technology and Teens", 4/24/2008, by Amanda Lenhart, Sousan Arafeh, Aaron Smith, and Alexandra Rankin Macgill Summary -- "Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them."The full 83 page PDF version is available here, and this is their press release.

Thanks to Stephen Abram for finding this.

RSC Website will be worked on

Here is some information concerning the Royal Society of Chemistry downtimes.

Monday 28th April – Journals search will be unavailable all day 2:00am – 11:00am, MT.

Tuesday 6th May – Website unavailable from 3:00am – 11.00am MT -- FTP & AutoPDF will also be unavailable from 2:00am – 11:00am MT

Monday 12th May – Website Unavailable from 2:00am to 8:00am MT.

I am pretty sure that the times are pretty accurate. The reason for the downtime? -- "In order to expand the RSC’s web offering we need to update our web infrastructure to newer technologies that we believe will enable us to provide a more reliable service to our customers. This has been a project that has been on going for about a year and we’re now at the stage to move our web systems into the new infrastructure."

Penrose Website received an honor

The Penrose Library Website was voted as the "College Library Web Site of the Month" from the College Libraries Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Added the CITI Program Today

The University of Denver now has access to the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program.

This is a web-based training program in animal and human research subjects protections. It includes basic courses covering subjects such as: biomedicine, social and behavioral topics, refreshers, good clinical practice, Health Information Privacy and Security (HIPS), laboratory animal welfare, and the responsible conduct of research. When you register, please select the University of Denver as your home institution.

SciFinder Scholar available on the Web???

It looks like CAS has finally developed a basic level web-based search platform for the commercial SciFinder product. Maybe they will have an interface for SciFinder Scholar ready soon, too. [It should be ready sometime in August, 2008 according to an email I received from their customer support.] More information can be found here and a flash demo is here. Thanks to Randy Reichardt at the University of Alberta for finding this.

"Web 2.0 and Libraries" -- Colorado Alliance meeting

I am going to the "Colorado Alliance Round Table -- Web 2.0 and Libraries" meeting tomorrow. I will try to report on all of the new things that I've learned.

We created a wiki for the meeting.

Carl Zimmer Presentation

The presentation by Carl Zimmer went well. Here are the blogs that he writes and mentioned at the talk.

The Loom
Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

Good to see that DU got a plug at the Loom.

He also posted a New York Times article concerning the topic of his new book.

Evaluation of the Penrose Library

Please help us evaluate the Penrose Library by filling out a LibQual survey. (Here is more information about LibQUAL.) Thousands of academic libraries across the country use this survey instrument, so we can easily compare our evaluations with other similar academic libraries. Here is a good article that covers some of the background -- "We Did LibQUAL+ Now What? Practical Suggestions for Maximizing Your Survey Results," College and Undergraduate Libraries, Vol 14(3):75-84.

Spring Research Workshop on RefWorks

Spring 2008 Research Workshops
RefWorks and RefShare (presented by Carrie Forbes)
Friday, April 11, 1-2 PM
Research Instruction Room, Main Level

Is trying to figure out how to make a bibliography or works cited page giving you a headache? Come learn how to use RefWorks, a Web-based bibliography manager. Participants will learn how to keep track of books, reports, journal articles, and Websites and then create finished bibliographies in APA, MLA, or Chicago styles. RefShare, a program that allows users to share bibliographies with others in RefWorks, will also be shown. Please RSVP for the Refworks Workshop.

Other Workshops will be presented on the Penrose Facebook Page, Creating and following Blogs, and on the "Three Googles" later in the Quarter.

New Environmental Database -- GreenFILE

GreenFILE offers well-researched but accessible information covering all aspects of the human impact on the environment. "Topics covered include global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. GreenFILE is multidisciplinary by nature and draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology."

You will be also able to find the database in the "Environmental Studies" category of Database and Article Search and within the Environmental Science Resources handout.

Government hearing concerning Second Life

The house Committee on Commerce and Energy held a hearing concerning virtual worlds on Friday, April 4th. Here's a video of it.

One of the speakers is Philip Rosedale, found of Linden Labs and Second Life, and he presents a video about Second Life.